Knowing about the past cannot help people to make important decisions today.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporti

It’s often that, as a kid, one would hear countless others complain about history as a subject in schools. Many of the complaints would often stem from individuals disagreeing that it was a subject of any importance, for the sheer reason that it was the past and would thus not directly affect our future. It’s also often the case that people are given advice to look forward and not backwards. While these statements do arise from reasonable conclusions, it’s also a mistake to dismiss our past so readily. Although our past cannot always directly affect our actions in the present and in the future, the past does always grasp a connection to our lives in ways that, one way or another, will influence some event that is about to happen or shape us as individuals. Thus, knowing about the past will almost always enhance our ability to make important decisions, whether it’s in a significant way or not.

One does not have to look far to see how far our society has come. There have been many injustices and atrocities committed throughout history, some of which include the killings of millions and millions of people like in the holocaust and others that include hate crimes of any sort. Our society has certainly progressed as time has gone on, and this is only due to decisions made by people that, one way or another, decided that such crimes were mistakes and thus major changes needed to occur. Certainly knowing of our world’s history allows us to lessen the chances of us making the same mistakes all over again. It was Martin Luther King’s ability to look into the past, to change the world that he lived in and that many had lived prior to him, that enabled him to attain such a determination to change the world. It was such a past that enabled the past to be called a “mistake”.

Of course, decisions being made do not have to account for such history that is filled with despair and hate. Technological inventions are just another example of how far we’ve come. It was and is the determination of many scientists and revolutionaries around the world to create such grand achievements. Such decisions being made had to evolve from smaller ideas in the past. Such an iphone could not have been developed had people not taken into account the way the cell phone was created, and those people could not have created the call phone had they not looked into the mechanics of the telephone. Knowing exactly what ways these creations were invented is what has allowed for further advancement in technology and millions of resources we have today. These grand achievements are important because the world has changed dramatically because of them, and these achievements only stemmed from past accomplishments.

On a much smaller scale, perhaps the most obvious way that knowing about the past allows us to make important decisions is in the way that the past forms our personalities. Knowing about our own past, and the past of those people that surround us, can only inform any bit of information that we are interested in analyzing to make better, more sound decisions. A woman will make the decision to marry her partner by taking into account who he is, and who he is depends on the things he’s done in his past. A man may decide to not marry his girlfriend because he realizes that she’s someone who, in the past, has only married and stolen her husbands’ money. All of these past events, all of our history and “baggage”, can only help in making any important decision.